More than 500 species: throughout Arctic and N and S temperate regions and extending to most subtropical and tropical mountains, in habitats such as temperate forests, mountain slopes, grasslands, wetlands, steppes, alpine areas and tundra, deserts, and around human habitation, on acidic to sub-basic or subsaline, dry to wet soils, from sea level to the upper limits of vegetation; 81 species (14 endemic, at least one introduced) in China.

Poa includes many species useful and important for forage, soil stabilization, and lawns, and several widespread weeds. Five of six recognized subgenera are present in China. (1) Poa subg. Arctopoa: stout plants with thick rhizomes, scabrid to ciliate lemma margins, and glabrous calluses, found in subsaline to subalkaline wetlands. (2) Poa subg. Ochlopoa: plants with bulbous sheathed culm bases (spikelets then often viviparous), or if not bulbous then commonly quite smooth throughout, with shortly villous palea keels and no callus hairs, sometimes annuals. (3) Poa subg. Pseudopoa: slender annuals with scabrid-angled panicle branches, shortish glumes, uppermost culm sheaths closed for 1/15–1/10 their length, glabrous calluses, and scabrid rachillas. (4) Poa subg. Poa: the largest and most diverse subgenus, including annuals and perennials, with or without rhizomes, but generally with the uppermost culm sheaths closed for over 1/4 their length. (5) Poa subg. Stenopoa: commonly tufted perennials generally with the uppermost culm sheaths closed for only 1/15–1/5(–1/4) their length, with mainly extravaginal shoots, mostly without rhizomes, mostly with panicle branches that are scabrid angled from the base, and with 3-veined first glumes.

Some species have races with florets that develop into bulbils that can readily send down roots as soon as they drop from the inflorescence (i.e., they are viviparous). Viviparous spikelets often have fairly normal-looking proximal florets. Pubescence on the lemmas and calluses of such florets is often poorly developed relative to that in normal spikelets, or absent. Identification is easiest with plants having normal spikelets.

Hybridization and facultative apomixis are common in some subgenera, especially Poa subg. Poa and P. subg. Stenopoa, and the vast majority of species studied are polyploid.

Lemma margins scabrid to long ciliate, or at least between lower margin and marginal vein; glumes often ciliolate on lower margins; plants robust with long thick rhizomes; butts of some old basal sheaths retrorsely strigose, hairs 0.1–0.2 mm.